Thai Made Easy: Daughter of local Thai purveyors goes mobile with the Thai on the Fly cart

Thai on the Fly serves huge helpings that can be shared on a small budget.

click to enlarge

Maam is always smiling. Maybe that's because she knows her Thai food, dished up from a small mobile food cart called Thai on the Fly and usually found beside the Aspect board shop on Galveston Avenue is some of the best in town.

Maam (she only offers her first name) is the daughter of one of Bend's happiest and hardest working couples, the owners of the original Taste of Thai "Thai on the Fly," who fill you with samples and a hearty serving of smiles before you make you order.

With a cart labeled simply, "Thai Food," Maam follows in the footsteps of her parents with a short list of delicious offerings as well as a generous number of samples to further ease your decision-making process.

After trying all three of the day's menus items - basil chicken, massaman curry potatoes with chicken and yellow curry tofu with potatoes - we settled on the basil chicken. What we got was heaping scoops of chicken, some basil and lots of broth served over a mound of rice. This pile of awesomeness cost us $7, the same as all the other menu items. A less greedy eater than myself could easily split a dish with a buddy, a solution that should satisfy both parties.Thai on the Fly, which is usually open for business from 11am-3pm, Tuesday through Saturday, reportedly makes some bitchin' fresh spring rolls too, but Maam was fresh out when we got there at 3pm on a Saturday.

We thought ahead and brought a couple tupperware containers from home that Maam happily filled for us. She seemed pumped about the prospect of saving some resources while keeping the landfill free of another crappy, single-use food container.